Genesis

Genesis
JESSICA'S POV.

A week had passed since Victoria and I watched the videos that helped make sense of Andre’s intentions. My heart breathed with more ease and less tension, an assuring evidence that I wasn’t at fault with everything that encircled around me.
But as the days passed by, with Victoria being a literal shoulder to rest on, I realized, it hurts. I felt my chest coagulate. Every nerve and muscle in me gave up taking a leave from their stagnant duties, with my rebellion and fight joining them. It started like a momentary feeling but grew into a new personality. The sun couldn’t penetrate through my curtains. I became one with the darkness I one feared.

Empty take out packs stacked all over my apartment with my procrastination hugging me. I couldn’t realize the difference between the putrid stench that was my pheromones and diverse expired edibles. I became a teenager in need of her mother’s attention to tidy up her room. But with the situation that presented itself, it wasn’t only my room that needed tidying up.

Everything I ever knew turned out to be nothing but lies. The tears that soaked my pillows were not close to expressing how I truly felt. A part of me wanted the world to see what I was feeling, to feel what I felt. But too bad no one in it has a drop of interest in your pain. Except from one person.
David.

As much as I want him to hold me, to assure me that everything was going to be alright like he always did, he couldn’t do that any longer. He lost that privilege ever since his transformation into someone I couldn’t look in the eye any longer.

The contemplations that circled my brains expanded to didactic words that proffered solutions to my predicament. If someone had a care in the world, I wouldn’t be in the room drowning in my solitude and regret. But all that didn’t matter because I have myself and I with no one else. This was enough for me.

David is to be kept at a distance for obvious reasons. But his teachings over the past few months have been nothing but useful.

Survival.

With every villain we faced, with every bullet we dodged and every building we jumped, we’ve always survived even though our emotions were heightened.
That is exactly what I’m going to do.

On ascending from my bed which seemed to be my only oasis, I felt a few bones in my body cracked, a resurrection from my slumber. I walked up to my window, almost forgetting how to work. I clenched my fists on my hot curtains and divided them parting light into the room. The sunlight shot at my eyes, a punishment for neglecting nature for a full week.
Where to begin? I asked myself. The constant sense that kept nagging the room was the putrid smell that made my apartment inhabitable. I made it my first task to be ticked off the list of the pile of work ahead of me. Every clothing I found, I stacked into my basket which was light at first but became heavy, a sign of my New Genesis with the intention of washing out every stench of David, Andre and my old life away.

As I soaked them one after the other into the washing machine, I came across a shirt that belonged to David. My heart skipped, trembling before picking it up into the air. I wondered if I should inhale it to remind myself of the safety he guaranteed and the promises he made or toss it away and move on with my life. On choosing the latter, I trashed it on the floor marking it as the first thing I needed to move on from.

As the machine rolled, I moved on to the next chore. With each work stacking on top of the other, I almost regret leaving them untidied but then I smiled and saw it as a new opportunity to start over rather than a burden. I moved on to the sweeping. As bad milk spilled on my body, sweat rolled down my body pinching and laying watermarks on the clothes I had on. It didn’t matter to me as everything was all a journey in my new phase.

After covering a list of chores, my eyes swept through the room and I couldn’t help but smile. I gazed around once more with my mouthing miming wow, like a visitor who entered someone’s home for the first time.

Even with all that, I still felt like I could do more, that I was meant for more. I played music, somber but sweet music to soothe my brain, a therapy I happened to have abandoned for a long period of time.

I began changing the arrangement of my room, a change in life needed a change in articulation. Every time I entered my apartment, I wanted the arrangement to serve as a reminder of where I was and where I intend to be.

As furniture were moved and carpet dragged, stains on the walls and delicate objects brought back memories. As I lifted up the rug underneath my dining table, a memory flashed right back into my head a I held a small painting in my hand.

It was a reminder of when I first started working at the art gallery. Victoria showed me all around the art gallery and I remembered the way I felt safe. The smell of newly brought in art work and the silence that gave more focus and emphasis on each painting.

Victoria dictated her thoughts about the painting slowly in her own narrative. “A splash of red which showed a splash of reality and cruelty of humanity.” The words and images played in my head like I was watching a movie. I remembered how my own perspective also shaped the painting and how it made the painting whole. “A touch of green calling us back to order accepting that the cruelty of humanity takes on different forms.”

Unknown to us, the artist was right behind us. That got both Victoria and I a free painting and me, an employment opportunity as a bonus. Waters invaded my eyes making them heavy. I couldn’t help but release these emotions as they are all I miss.
I made it my next mission of getting my life back to other outside the four corner
s of my house, my safe space, my oasis.